Livestock farming is the dominant economic activity in rangeland ecosystems such as the West African Sahel, where natural vegetation only grows during the rainy season of 3-4 months between July and October. An on-going international scientific study is exploring a new method of estimating plant biomass availability based on near real-time information delivered by the Copernicus Global Land Service, which can help stakeholders to make early decisions about possible fodder deficits in countries as Senegal and Niger.

The Copernicus Emergency Management Service's Risk & Recovery Mapping module can support disaster risk reduction, preparedness and prevention, recovery and reconstruction by providing pre- and post-disaster maps and vector data to European and international stakeholders in the field of disaster management and civil protection. The German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance has demonstrated the value of this type of mapping to its national risk assessment, making two requests for activation of the service.

In motion

The European Commission (EC) is organising a series of workshops aimed at gathering user requirements to be fulfilled by the next generation of the Copernicus programme's Space Component. The most recent workshops focused on issues which relate to crucial societal challenges: the monitoring of polar regions and continental snow cover, as well as agriculture and forestry. The main goal of these workshops is to understand how the future Copernicus Sentinels and Contributing Missions could satisfy the needs of the scientific and operational communities dealing with these issues.

The winners of the Copernicus Masters 2016 will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on 25th October 2016. Just a few weeks before this ceremony, Copernicus Observer interviewed Marc Bickel and Bastian Burger, last year’s overall winners, who were also awarded the Space Imaging High-Res Urban Challenge prize for their Building Radar platform, and asked them to share with readers what winning the competition meant to them and how it has helped them to create new business opportunities.

In order to improve the capabilities of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF has launched seven proof-of-concept projects which will ensure that the service adapts in response to the needs of strategic sectors for climate change mitigation and resilience.

Business Corner

"Copernicus has become a synonym for a new era of Earth Observation (EO) supported applications. Copernicus provides perspectives for reliable satellite observation with spatial and temporal resolutions which are of importance for many applications". Opinion on Copernicus, by Dr. Thomas Heege, CEO EOMAP GmbH & Co.KG.

mundialis is a German SME which uses Open Source Software (e.g. GRASS GIS, GeoServer) to deliver processed satellite information from the Copernicus Sentinels and other free and open data sources to its users. The company has built a High Performance Computing processing chain dedicated to Copernicus Sentinel-2 data, enabling valuable information to be rapidly extracted from huge volumes of satellite imagery.